The Conflict at Home

MULTICULTURALISTS hold these truths to be self-evident: that all cultures are created equal and are endowed by their creators with equal and compatible virtues. There can thus be no fundamental conflict between cultures. The lion can truly lie down with the lamb, not at some unspecified time in the future, but here and now, in the gardens of the West.

The shallowness of this view should require no exposition: any more than the barfly’s oceanic feeling after a couple of drinks that all men are his brothers requires refutation. The fact that it does is not a sign of our broad-mindedness or generosity of spirit, but of our deliberate failure to make proper distinctions. This mental flabbiness is decadence, and at the same time a manifestation of the arrogant assumption that nothing can destroy us. Only those who feel themselves to be omnipotent are omni-tolerant.

MULTICULTURALISTS hold these truths to be self-evident: that all cultures are created equal and are endowed by their creators with equal and compatible virtues. There can thus be no fundamental conflict between cultures. The lion can truly lie down with the lamb, not at some unspecified time in the future, but here and now, in the gardens of the West.

The shallowness of this view should require no exposition: any more than the barfly’s oceanic feeling after a couple of drinks that all men are his brothers requires refutation. The fact that it does is not a sign of our broad-mindedness or generosity of spirit, but of our deliberate failure to make proper distinctions. This mental flabbiness is decadence, and at the same time a manifestation of the arrogant assumption that nothing can destroy us. Only those who feel themselves to be omnipotent are omni-tolerant.

About the Author

Theodore Dalrymple

Mr. Dalrymple, a retired doctor, is a contributing editor of City Journal and The New English Review. He is the author of False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine.